


poison oak

by Beyond_the_Grace



Series: kindness blooms [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Extended Metaphors, Flowers, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Metaphors, Poisons, Pre-Canon, intentionally lowercase, so many metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26290300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beyond_the_Grace/pseuds/Beyond_the_Grace
Summary: regulus knew he was just the spare, the unimportant failsafe, he always had been. so why did it hurt so much?a character study of regulus black growing up in grimmauld place.
Relationships: Orion Black & Regulus Black, Regulus Black & Sirius Black, Regulus Black/Evan Rosier
Series: kindness blooms [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773583
Comments: 4
Kudos: 197





	poison oak

**Author's Note:**

> some tw for childabuse but nothing explicit.  
> also this is set before the other fics in the series. i should be posting a harry focused one soon.

an heir and a spare. the second born child of such noble families always knew their place and regulus knew he was no exception. he only existed for if something went wrong with his brother, his mother had never minced her words about this. regulus would only be expected to marry the right girl and have children to continue the family line. one purpose that was so easily fufilled, it was sirius with the pressure to carry the family and become head. these were the facts of his life that regulus knew well. and if he was honest he liked it this way, this way he could focus on his own hobbies and loves.

and so regulus arcturus black grew slowly in solitude. he creeped and hid and smiled and charmed, became deadly nightshade before his parents eyes. he said all the right things, knew all the right answers and lived my the moral of children being seen and not heard. he was a cold blooded little thing, so at odds with his brothers sensitivity and passion. sirius was loud and opinionated but also reckless and stupid. it was okay though because the head of their house was allowed to be these things. sirius was allowed to torment their cousins and push boundaries. regulus wasn't, regulus had to be quiet and submissive but still man enough to keep a wife inline. sirius was the favored child, regulus was also there.

"promise you won't forget me." regulus had demanded before sirius got on the train the first time.

"i'll write every week." sirius had promised. "you'll be coming with me next year anyway"

but not all promises were meant to be kept. things changed irreversibly.

* * *

it wasn't hufflepuff. it wasn't hufflepuff so mother just screamed. it wasn't hufflepuff so father didn't hurt them. it wasn't hufflepuff so regulus still had a brother.

it was gryffindor though.

nightshade could be hidden, could be poised as pretty and perfect but hurt under it all. regulus couldn't be that anymore. the spare may not be a fail safe soon. sirius' friends were making the family nervous. a lot of things made the family nervous. regulus felt he couldn't keep his head above water some days, other he wasn't sure it was worth doing so. sirius may have been the traitor but it was regulus who had to deal with it.

so he read. he read and he learnt and his mother chilled out because one son may have been a faliure but the other one was trying, the lesser son still tried and most days that was enough. but on others it wasn't. other days were bad days, days when father wouldn't come down for breakfast in the morning or dinner at night and mother would drink until she couldn't anymore and regulus tried to study but wasn't allowed to lock himself away and it was all too much.

"useless boy!" mother would scream "useless boy, why couldn't it have been you?"

but those were the better days, regulus already knew he wasn't as good as sirius so what was another reminder. the bad days happened even if she hadn't drank anything.

the bad days were when she looked across the table and asked him "why are you studying? you won't be as smart as sirius anyway. some people are just naturally gifted."

the bad days she'd remind him that sirius hadn't written, that he had sent back all his brothers letters unopen.

there were a lot of bad days, regulus wasn't sure if he could remember any good ones.

he was lily white and pure, hemlock in a family of elder flower in his mothers eyes but the opposite in his father's. he was still unttainted but they all knew that regulus was easily manipulated, weak willed enough to do what ever he was told no matter how it hurt, willing to do anything to keep his family together even though everyone else wanted to tear it apart.

* * *

over that first summer regulus hardened still.

all sirius and mother did for six weeks was scream at each other, they told each other how awful they were not seeing the irony in how alike they always had been. regulus's head hurt more often than it didn't and his nerves were frayed from trying to keep it all together. he creeped along both sides, trying to anchor it all together like ivy, unaware that sometimes it was better for things to break. unaware that sometimes the glue keeping things together was the poison. the boy becomes poison ivy. the boy implodes. he is nothing now.

orion took his youngest son out once that summer. he took him down to the river and they stood in silence together for a while.

"i have many regrets in my life." orion shattered the silence. "too many to count most days but you son will always be my greatest."

regulus said nothing. he blinked harshly.

"if i had known how hard this would all be on you then i would have sent you away, gotten rid of you or prevented your existence. i would have given you to one of those dreaded muggle orphanages had i known how all this would go. you deserve so much better than you got. if i had known i would have done anything." orion's voice was unusually tender. "i'm so proud of you son but i fear for you more than anyone. sirius can look after himself but there are dark things brewing, that mother of yours will destroy you given half a chance. you, my boy, must learn how to bend before they make you break. you need to stop trying to hold us together."

"family always comes first." regulus recited.

"hmm, perhaps." orion turned from the river to regulus. "when you return from school i will begin lessons with you. you must not tell anyone about them."

* * *

evan turned him from poison to antidote. evan taught him about life, how to really live it. he was eleven years old and felt like he could breath for the first time.

he was sorted into slytherin. he had done his duty to the black house. finally he could sleep. well so he thought. evan had other plans of course, evan had been bought up in a stuffy manor and now he was free he wanted to see it all. and so began the double act that was black and rosier. they were cruel boys, cruel boys with a point to prove. if it was the marauders being blamed for their pranks that was just convenient. evan made georgia rodgers cry and regulus swallowed the sickness that lingered. evan wanted to dangle some mudblood out a window and regulus told him that they'd just get caught. evan cried at night that his parents didn't love him and regulus healed the hurt, told him stories till tears turned to laughter. regulus was willow tree, he was an antidote and a healer.

regulus fell in love with art. his studying made the classes easy, he was the smartest in the year but so bored. so he studied other things. manipulation and art and literature and anything else that looked useful. he drew piece upon piece and he learnt codes until each painting was a message; a diary entry and a secret in each piece, no one knew regulus. no one saw beyond the beautiful pictures. the problem with willow and art is both can burn and burn they did.

regulus always knew he wasn't just into girls. james potter had been evidence enough of that but whatever it was he had with evan was far deeper than some stupid crush. evan was his best friend but they both knew their touches lingered a tad too long, that regulus was the only one capable of stopping him from going too far and so in fourth year they started doing... something. it wasn't quite dating. they couldn't actually do that, not in their positions but it was something like that. his drawings turned from scenery to the boy with the hazel eyes who held his heart. 

"i know your secret." barty had told him one morning at breakfast. regulus raised an eyebrow and sipped at his tea. he liked barty, he was often the third wheel of their group on evan's insistence but that didn't mean he could trust him.

"i don't have any secrets." regulus replied primly, ever the prince.

"bullshit. you love evan."

"someone had to."

he thinks the growl that barty admits before storming off is telling. all these boys are more than a little broken.

unfortuantly evan was too. years after they first started out they took marks together. evan had this way about him where he knew things he couldn't, he knew regulus's doubts. after evan's second to last mission he burnt their shared apartment down. regulus had been missing for three months.

evan died a week later

* * *

the summer that sirius left was tough. it wasn't anything particular that set mother and him off but it was the last time. orion and regulus spent the fight holed up in the office as they did most days. the lessons had switched from occulmency, when he first started, to muggle culture right through to being the heir. orion was a good slytherin and wished for his sons to be the same, a temper would not make a successful man but class and culture would. secrets had to be well kept. so whilst walburga and sirius exchanged insults and curses the other blacks planned and schemed. regulus was fine, sirius hadn't been a real brother since he met james potter and whilst regulus had never understood he had counted his losses a long time ago.

"you are the heir now regulus, i hope you don't make a mess of it all as your brother has." orion had told his son.

"of course not." the faithful son replied.

and that, as they say, was that.

* * *

his mother began to lose her grip on reality after sirius left. she had always been high strung but the cousins had been whispering in her ear about a man who was going to save them all. bellatrix had pledged allegiance a few months prior and narcissa's husband had joined an age ago. dinners were no longer about school or the traitor but rather a man whose name was only whispered in shadows, about a man who would boast them back to the status they should be at. regulus hid his fear, if there was one thing the books told him it was that no man should have that much power.

"do you before me pledge your allegiance to the cause?" the man had stood before him, evan and barty either side of him.

"yes my lord." they all swore in perfect unison.

"then you must prove it."

a single curse on one muggle and you could prove your worth to the cause. a single unforgivable of you choosing, it was no choice really. the thing about the unforgivables is you have to meet them and in that moment with all his lily white purity regulus meant it. he meant it when he killed a muggle woman because he knew if he didn't kill her she would be tortured too, he saved her from that prolonged pain that the others would rejoice in but still that night was the last night he'd sleep until his apparent death two years later. this lord thought of him as quick, callous and efficient, he wanted to cry.

his brother had only ever seen him as soft, his mother as lesser and his father as the final option.

evan saw something else. but he knew that not even he could be trusted; no one could.

so the war began and when regulus was not in school he was trying to stop the damage from getting too bad. he was trying to keep his sanity whilst killing innocents, whilst he mother cried at him for not being as strong as sirius, whilst sirius cursed him at every opportunity till james potter dragged him away. and orion would give him a glass of whiskey and fix his wounds and evan would give him his stash of dried gillyweed when he passed out because sleep was no longer viable. and he got on with it because there was nothing left.

till kreature returned from the lord's mission looking half dead and told him of a cave and he looked through his notes and suddenly there was hope, there was clarity, there was a plan.

* * *

poison oaks are named for their deception. they look like regular bushes, named for the leaves resemblance of that of an oak but in fact they are quite deadly.

regulus was named for a star, for the heart of a lion and despite the softness he often leaned towards he had a lions heart.

but he was a deceptor too, he weaved himself between different societies and classes, always underestimated despite the promise he showed. he was second to a brother who'd never wanted him. regulus was jealous and bitter and oh so charming.

he was like a poison oak because as he planned the death of a lord the lord saw him as faithful and whilst he mother mourned a second son he lived on.

regulus knew himself and his ideas.

he was ready now.


End file.
